I’m currently reading Anne Applebaum’s “Gulag : A history” (2003). In the introduction is a section about pre-Soviet times, which tells about an earlier version of Soviet justice.
The practice of exiling people who simply didn’t fit in continued throughout the nineteenth century. In his book, Siberia and the Exile System, George Kennan–uncle of the American statesman–described the system of “administrative process” that he observed in Russia in 1891:
The obnoxious person may not be guilty of any crime…but if, in the opinion of the local authorities, his presence in a particular place is ‘prejudicial to public order’ or ‘incompatible with public tranquility,’ he may be arrested without warrant, may be held from two weeks to two years in prison, and may then be removed by force to any other place within the limits of the empire and there be put under police surveillance for a period of from one to ten years.
And now that type of justice is coming to the west. Great Britain now has “Anti-Social Behaviour Ordinances” by which that country has casually tossed aside a thousand years of progress in the rule of law.
Consider the information on the web at scotland.shelter.org.uk:
The law says that someone is behaving in an antisocial manner if:
* they are acting in a manner that is causing, or is likely to cause, alarm or distress, or
* they are doing several things over a period of time that cause, or are likely to cause, alarm or distress to at least one person living in another household.This definition also covers verbal abuse, so if someone has been shouting and swearing at you or even saying things which make you and others feel uneasy, then it could be classed as antisocial behaviour under the law.
Whatever the problem is, it has to have happened more than once to at least one person. If it’s an isolated incident, it won’t count as antisocial behaviour, although there may be other things you can do to solve the problem, such as getting an interdict from a court
You don’t have to be guilty of any crime, you only need to be doing something the local authorities don’t like. It’s a rather arbitrary power. There is an appeals process, and the power isn’t supposed to be completely arbitrary, but words like “alarm,” “distress,” and “feel uneasy” can cover just about anything.
Why do I care what the Brits are doing? Well, we seem to be following in their path to a welfare-police state. That’s what a lot of Americans are counting on the coming elections to do for us. I am not sure how something like this cannot come here in the aftermath.